_Discovery of Motives, No. I._--But why did Professor Tyndall make such an appeal to the imagination of his hearers? His imaginary picture of the occult operations of light was introduced as a plea for the wildness of such weaker brethren, as he calls Mr. Darwin, in speaking of his theory of natural selection, succeeded by his supplementary theory of pangenesis. It is objected to Mr. Darwin’s theories by Christian philosophers that these theories are essentially atheistic. That they are framed for the express purpose of blotting out of the page of nature some of the most marvellous evidences of design--of the most patent revelations of the book of nature, that there is an all-wise, all-mighty Creator, God. That these theories deprive man of all those prerogatives that raise him above the brute. That the facts of nature contradict them. The first theory of Mr. Darwin, that of natural selection, is an attempt to account for the formation of all animal and vegetable beings from an hypothetical germ.... Even this does not pall the imagination of Professor Tyndall. He accepts the theory of the avowed atheist Louis Buchner, in his ‘Force and Matter,’ that the theory of evolution requires us to imagine not only that all the structures, animal and vegetable, were once potentially present in the fire-mist of the nebulous theory, but also that all mental powers--Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael--are potential in the fires of the sun. Professor Tyndall appeals to believers in the Bible as God’s Word not to style such a theory wicked or impious. He says men can hold it, and manifest in their lives what he terms so-called Christian virtues. He says, ‘They who keep such questions open and will not tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon of their souls, have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God, as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God.’ These men then are theists, but what kind of a God does their free speculation require? The theists who are sneered at by Professor Tyndall, who believe in a God who has revealed his will and his mind to man, have far higher and more convincing proofs that He has so revealed Himself than Professor Tyndall can ever accumulate for his belief in the undulatory theory of light. Professor Tyndall’s philosophy regards the universe as a huge mechanical, self-supporting, self-sustaining, self-evolving, material machine--untended by a loving Father’s sustaining and providential care. His God is the God of the Epicureans, who created and started the machine into motion and then left it for ever to itself. Such a philosophy, the child of unbridled pride of intellect, may appeal to the wildest imagination of corrupted human nature, but it has no sympathy with all the higher yearnings of the soul. _From the_ LANCET, _Sept._ 24, 1870.